


Communications

by Soujin



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soujin/pseuds/Soujin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy fails to astonish Spock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Communications

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know.

It’s evident that Doctor McCoy is irritable because he injects the punch syringe of pramoxine hydrochloride with excessive force, and his hands are shaking as he spreads the mixture of medical silver and sulfadine on Spock’s arm. Spock notes to himself, automatically, that this hurts.

“I fail to see why you are so agitated, Doctor,” he says, possibly to be provoking. His delivery is deadpan, his facial muscles hardly move, but he knows the Doctor will take it for what it is, because McCoy has been on this ship with him too long not to understand him at least a little--McCoy is a human, given to a short and spiteful temper, but perceptive enough to know the expressions of his shipmates.

“Do you?” he says acidly, cleaning green blood off Spock’s hand with a basic antibacterial solution, washing away the traces of where Spock grasped his own wound to apply pressure to the bleeding (the sleeve of his uniform had become burned into his skin, and when he removed it the burn bled profusely).

“Yes. I have received an injury, but it is comparatively minor and under your care I should hardly expect to develop a sepsis--”

“A sepsis!” McCoy snaps, his head jerking up to look at Spock. “A sepsis! You’re lucky you aren’t getting a tissue graft!”

“That is true,” Spock says, raising his eyebrows. “A graft would be difficult to arrange, although I am confident that your methods are sufficiently advanced to cultivate epidermal tissue using my own cells, rather than scour the galaxy for another Vulcan to donate the tissue.”

McCoy narrows his eyes. “You’re damned right my methods are sufficiently advanced. I could grow you a new head if I had to. Maybe that’s what I should do. Maybe another head would bring some manners with it.”

“That is hardly necessary.”

McCoy finishes cleaning the blood and throws the towel down on the counter. “Necessary! You’ve got caustic burns all over you from a simple shore mission! What kind of idiot beams down onto a planet for a diplomatic meeting and ends up with caustic burns? Jim probably let you talk to them; I’d throw acid at you too if I had to spend a whole dinner listening to you and your Vulcan nonsense!”

“I detect several fallacies in your statements. First of all, I have only been burned on my left arm. Furthermore, I was not burned during or immediately subsequent to the dinner. My injuries occurred the morning after, when a member of the escort proved a threat to the captain.”

“You’re nothing but a man-shaped computer,” McCoy says, in a tone that is half angry and half sly, as if he hoped to provoke Spock to indignation or protest. Spock regards him.

“What a peculiar claim to make. In the course of treating me you must be acutely aware of the inaccuracy.”

When McCoy begins the process of applying synthetic foam dressing to Spock’s arm, he does not do so gently. He keeps his head down. Finally, Spock says,--

“I had begun to speak earlier of the expertise of your medical care, Doctor.”

“What? Are you going to start complaining?”

“I am going to thank you.”

“What?”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

McCoy sighs. “All these years I’ve been patching you two idiots up, and you thank me over a burn? I could dress a burn in my sleep halfway through medical academy, you green-blooded--”

“Hobgoblin.”

“That’s exactly what I was going to say. Any fool can dress a burn.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Can you even feel grateful? I thought nothing had any effect on you. Unaffected, I thought you said.”

“Vulcans experience emotions. We do not allow ourselves to be distracted by them, or their expression. Objective observation is crucial in the interpretation of data.”

“Are you observing something now?”

“Objectively I would say that I can detect irritability on your part because of my self-control.”

“I should give you a punch hypo of stimulant and see what happens to your self-control.”

“I would rather you did not.”

“And I’d rather you didn’t get shot or struck by lightning or burned up or squashed by some fat sentient rock, but that doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

“Why, Doctor. I didn’t realise you cared.” Eyebrows up again: Spock lifts them delicately, watching McCoy closely. McCoy’s hands are shaking again, and the smock-like front of his Starfleet Medic’s uniform is smeared with a green streak of blood. Spock notes with well-concealed surprise that this really may be the day he pushes him too far.

“Taking care of you both for years,” McCoy mutters, putting the syringes and vacuum-sealed bottles of hydrochloride and V-saline back in their cabinets with force, capping the tub of silver cream. “Damned idiots, the both of you. Jim and his crazy ideas, and you and your insufferable logic.”

Spock rolls his uniform sleeve down over the dressings. “Are you expressing affection for me?” he asks, and suddenly wonders whether he has been overestimating McCoy’s ability to differentiate between his teasing and his genuine questions.

“What the hell do you think?” McCoy says, in a tone that suggests Spock is correct.

“Leonard,” he says, in the gentlest voice he can manage, although it’s hard to break his well-controlled monotone after spending his whole life trying to perfect it (no one on Vulcan ever questioned his ability to blend in, his Vulcan blood, his composure: it was accepted that he was one of them, of that race. All his struggles, all the time he spent forcing down every stray feeling, all of these things were fully his own battles, unshared. All his human guilt was his own to fight with. The sinking feeling that came every time as a boy he thought of T’Pring, now nothing more than a memory thanks to Jim, that was his own secret. No one knows how difficult it has been, or how easy it is becoming).

“Leonard?” McCoy glares at him, folding his arms across his chest.

“I’m sorry if you have been under the impression that I do not appreciate you.”

“I don’t want to be appreciated, you--you _fool_. I want--I want to--!”

“Yes?”

“--to kiss you until you shut the hell up!” McCoy says, with both truth and triumph, as if this declaration is the one thing Spock will never have an answer for.

Spock thinks that perhaps he should have expected this, and then reminds himself that humans are unpredictable by very nature, and it’s understandable that the last thing he expected was the chief medical officer of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_ to confess an attraction to him. He wonders if this was apparent to some part of himself that he’s learned not to listen to, whether that’s the reason the revelation doesn’t perturb him, why his stomach doesn’t turn as it did with T’Pring. He extends his hand to McCoy.

“What’s that supposed to be?” McCoy asks. His voice is gruff.

“You may kiss me, Doctor.”

“That’s your hand.”

“I am aware of that fact. Among Vulcans, the hand and digits, not the lips, are a source of sexual stimulation.”

McCoy stares at him for a moment, and then takes Spock’s hand, lifts it to his lips. “This is ridiculous,” he says, and then he kisses Spock’s fingers, first the tips and then the joints, then turns the hand over and kisses the palm. It’s the hand McCoy had just washed, and Spock imagines his mouth tingling slightly from the antibacterial solution, perhaps a bitterness that finds his tongue. McCoy sighs and kisses Spock’s hand again. “I feel like an idiot,” he complains.

“No doubt. You are a doctor, not a lover,” Spock says, his eyebrows lifting again as McCoy turns an outraged look on him.

“I _am_ going to give you that punch hypo. When you’re sleeping. When you’re not expecting it. And then I’m going to show you how to kiss like a real human being.”

“You could show me now.”

“And risk ruining a perfectly good dressing? Ha.”

“You stated earlier that you could make up such a dressing in your sleep.”

“And don’t you think I can’t. But I won’t give you the satisfaction of getting your way.”

“I believe that it would in fact be your way, given that you’re the one who wished to kiss me.”

“Give me that,” McCoy says, catching Spock’s hand again and _licking it_ , running his tongue along the palm to the base of Spock’s index finger. Spock’s fingers clench involuntarily. McCoy looks at him with satisfaction. “Don’t you argue with me. I know your weakness.”

“I do not believe it is a weakness,” Spock says.

“It will be.”

Spock considers all the years he’s spent separating his Vulcan nature from his human, like two sets of data carefully scatterplotted on the same chart in two different colours, one dull and one bright; like a communication frequency with interference, the other sounds lifted clear to leave one distinct message. All of that, and here he stands in the medical bay, the nerve endings in his palm still alert with sensation.

“I suggest we adjourn to quarters,” he says, because that truly is the logical choice.

“Just a minute.” McCoy takes a tray off one of the shelves and fills it the topical V-saline bottle, some cotton, the silver tub, and a handful of dressing. “Just to be on the safe side. I’m not exactly a sterile contact surface,” he says.

“That is a surprisingly logical assessment, Doctor.”

“Maybe it rubbed off,” McCoy says, and Spock decides that McCoy knows perfectly well when he’s being teased after all.


End file.
